The Coolest Part Of New Game 'Destiny' Shows Mobile Has Nothing On Consoles

Over the weekend, I tried out “Destiny,” the new game from the makers of “Halo”
that’s coming out in September during an alpha demo for
PlayStation 4 users.

If you don’t know much about the game, you play as one of the last
defenders of Earth hundreds of years in the future. The planet
has since been raided by different alien races that you're tasked
to clear out. You have the option to
play by yourself or with a group of people in a type of massive
multiplayer online (MMO) world.

In the alpha, gamers were dropped onto a large open map of a
futuristic Earth.

By far, one of the best experiences is the ability to organically
play with other people, and not just other gamers you may know
but total strangers who could be living anywhere else in the
world (or at least if you were in one of the 39
participating countries for the alpha).

Players could come in and out to fight off aliens, called the
Fallen, if you need a helping hand.

I spent a lot of time on Earth in what's referred to as Old
Russia.

Sony/Bungie

We started out in these
two locations.Sony/Bungie

While I had no problem taking down the Fallen on my own, there
was one section of the map I found that was absolutely impossible
to beat when going it alone. I headed down to this dark, dank
underground hanger where there were a group of stronger
sword-wielding foes.

I'm not even sure why I
thought it was a good idea to head down here.Sony/Bungie

It was like something
straight out of a horror movie.Sony/Bungie

I thought if I could get a few players to follow me down there we
might be successful in taking them down, but since you’re in a
pretty large map there aren’t always a lot of other players
hanging around.

One time I started out, I had another gamer start following me
around. This is pretty normal. Often, other players will linger
around you for a while. If they get bored, they’ll walk away and
do their own thing. If I don’t want to play with them anymore, I
simply head out. No big deal.

I thought I’d head back over to the dungeon-like area. We both
headed down, and it was game on. Soon someone else joined,
and it was awesome.

We didn't really seem to be getting anywhere in lowering the
health of the giant creatures, but the thrill received was more
than any rush I would get from pairing multiples of three in a mobile
app.

It wasn't only great that three strangers were working together
to fight for the same cause, but we all had each other’s
backs.

Here, I brought another
player back to life, only to get myself killed in the process.
HUGE bummer. BUT, I was revived right after as a thank
you.Bungie/Sony

Anytime someone gets killed in the game there’s a prompt on the
screen for others to “revive” them. There was never any question
whether to bring someone back to life. It’s just what you do.
Otherwise, we would regenerate pretty far from the hanger, and
that wasn't helpful to anyone.

The other time teamwork was extremely useful was during event
gameplay. Every hour or so “Destiny” offered gamers a chance to
play a special event in which anyone on a map could join together
and try to take down a group of Fallen.

If you weren’t participating in one of these event missions, you
were missing out. They were incredibly tough to beat, but were
probably the most fun I had in the entire game. During
one of the events, players had to protect a giant spherical
object from predators.

It was just two of us, and we did pretty well.

Sony/Bungie

... until the
end when we were getting completely clobbered. (We probably could
have used a few more Guardians on our side.)

Sony/Bungie

And I think that's one of the points that the developer, Bungie,
is trying to get across with "Destiny." Sure, you can play the
game on your own, but if you want to be really
successful, you're only as strong as
the team beside you.

That's
something you can't get from most mobile apps, which, while fun,
mostly provide a nice distraction during a work commute. I don't
need to work on a team to play "Dots," "Threes," "Flappy Bird,"
"Angry Bird," or "Candy Crush."

Of course
teamwork in games is nothing new. People play on teams in just
about any console or PC game out there. Most of the time, you're
usually grouped together for a particular mission or to play a
battle match against another team. "Destiny" reminded me that
this is why we play games on the PlayStation, Xbox, Wii, or
Steam.

There's a lot
of talk about whether or not mobile is killing the game console.
This is one experience
you can never get out of a game on your phone.